How to Deliver a Great TED Talk: Presentation Secrets of the World's Best Speakers (How to Give a TED Talk) (7 page)

PART 2

UNEXPECTED

Boring presentations are predictable. On the other hand, an outstanding presenter stands out from the rest and grabs audience attention by doing or saying something unexpected. In this section, you will learn how to grab audience attention by doing something unexpected
without
being gimmicky:

More specifically, you will know how to add the element of “unexpectedness” by learning how to:

• Use shocking statistics and facts to grab audience attention
  
• Offer the audience something new (or unconventional)
  
• Create a WOW moment
  

CHAPTER SEVEN

Using Statistics to Grab Attention

Using shocking statistics is a great way to capture audience attention. For example, look at how
celebrity chef Jamie Oliver
used a startling statistic to grab audience attention in his 2010 TED talk:

“Sadly, in the next eighteen minutes when I do our chat, four Americans that are alive will be dead from the food that they eat”

Wow, what a powerful and shocking statistic! One of the things that make this statistic very powerful is that Jamie puts the statistic into the audience’s context. Instead of saying, “One hundred and seventeen thousand Americans die every year because of the food that they eat,” Jamie makes the numbers easier to digest. A year is a very long time, so Jamie boils the statistic down to the same amount of time as the TED talk. Highlighting the number of deaths that take place during the TED talk makes the situation seem more urgent. It makes the audience members aware of the deaths taking place
right now
as they sit in the room.

Second, it’s hard to digest 117,000 deaths … at a certain point, if a statistic is too large, the sheer size of the figure causes audience members to become indifferent to the situation instead of causing empathy. However, four deaths is a smaller number to digest and imagine, so it causes audience members to become hopeful that it is a manageable situation.

Now, let’s look at other ways you can use statistics in a speech.

If you were asked to write an article to convey to your readers the magnitude of Bill Gates’ wealth in an interesting and memorable manner, how would you write it? Sure, you could quote Bill Gate’s wealth of $40 billion from the Fortune website, but as you’ll learn from the example of a Wall Street journalist, there’s a much more effective way to make such statistics “sticky” by relating them to your listeners.

If you were called upon to make a speech to prove the fast pace of your company’s technological innovation, what would you say? You could show colorful graphs that illustrate your company’s total R&D expenditure and return on investment, but there’s an even simpler technique you can pick up from Intel’s CEO Paul Otellini.

If you were a leader whose task was to show a nation that the deficit had ballooned to dangerous levels, what would you say that would motivate people to call for a stop to the spending? You could unsuccessfully spout off various economic indicators, or you could do what President Dwight D. Eisenhower did to create a visual statistic that stuck in his listeners’ minds.

However, before we examine the various ways that you can use statistics in your communication to create persuasive messages, we first need to address the issue of:

CREDIBILITY vs. MEMORABILITY

Look at the following two statistics:

(A)  In the year 2009, more than 1,265,000 people died in China due to smoking.

(B)  Approximately 2,000 people die each day in China due to smoking.

Statistics are a great way of adding credibility because they provide evidence for your point of view. In this case, both statements (A) and (B) provide credibility for your communication, although (A) provides more credibility because it gives the perception of accuracy. However, not many people will remember (A).

Statement (B), on the other hand, does a better job of “memorability.” Your listeners are more likely to remember that “2,000 people die each day in China due to smoking” because it is a smaller number than (A)
and
it’s rounded off.

So, if you want credibility, provide accurate statistics. (Just don’t go crazy! One decimal point is enough for most cases.) If you want memorability, provide smaller numbers (e.g., instead of talking about the deaths per year, talk about deaths per day/hour/minute/second) and round the numbers off for easier recall.

However, there is a better solution. You could have
both
credibility
and
memorability with the following phrase:

“
In the year 2009, over 1,265,000 people died in China due to smoking. In other words,
approximately 2,000 people a day died because of smoking.”

In this sentence, we have both credibility from (A) and memorability from (B).

There is also another way to have both credibility and memorability, and that is with the use of fractions. Take the following two statistics:

(C)  66.7% of people in the U.K. have access to a computer

(D)  2 out of 3 people in the U.K. have access to a computer

In this example, (C) provides credibility, but (D) provides
both
credibility
and
memorability. Statement (D) is just the fraction form of (C) – it is still just as accurate, and it is easier to remember because small fractions are easier to remember than percentages.

Using statistics that are both credible and memorable helps make sure that your viewpoint will be both
accepted
and
remembered.
Now, let’s look at how to make your statistics “sticky” by relating them to your listeners.

RELATE IT TO THE AUDIENCE

One way to make effective use of statistics is to relate them to your audience. Let’s go back to the Bill Gates example. Here’s how a writer for the
Wall Street Journal
related Gates’ wealth to the average reader [I’ll write it in my own words so that you can get the full gist of the technique being used]:

Let us say that you’re an average person who earns an average salary. And let’s say that one weekend you take your spouse to the cinema. Now, while you’re standing in line you see that Bill and Melinda Gates are also paying for the same movie that you are going to be watching. The difference is: If Bill Gates was to pay to pay the same percentage of his wealth that you pay, then it would cost him $19 million for the tickets alone!

The reason that this statistic is effective is because it actively involves you: you are the comparison by which the statistic makes a point. Previously, you may have known that $40 billion was a lot of money, but it may have been very hard to put it into context. The strategy of “relating a statistic to the audience” puts scenarios in the context of the listeners’ world – making the statistic more impactful and exciting.

Here’s another example. In the movie “
Coach Carter,”
Coach Carter uses the following statistic:

In this county, thirty three percent of black males between eighteen and twenty four get arrested. So look at the guy on your left, now look at the guy on your right. One of you is going to get arrested.

Coach Carter relates the statistic in a powerful way that brings the reality home to his audience.

Relating your statistics to your audience turns boring statistics into powerful and memorable ones that grab and keep your audience’s attention.

COMPARE AND CONTRAST

This technique is similar to the previous one in that it puts statistics in context of your listener’s lives. However, while the last statistic directly involved your listener, this technique is similar to an analogy: it puts things in context by comparing them to other, more familiar environments.

For example, let’s assume that you’re a technophobe. You’re bad at technology. However, due to your son’s insistence, he’s driven you down to see a talk by Intel CEO Paul Otellini. You didn’t think you’d enjoy the talk, but thanks to Otellini’s easy comparisons, you’ve managed to grasp just how quickly technology is changing. Here’s how Otellini used the compare and contrast technique to relate technological innovation to something that’s easier for you to understand – automobiles:

“Today we have the industry’s first-shipping 32-nanometer process technology. A 32-nanometer microprocessor is 5,000 times faster; its transistors are 100,000 times cheaper than the 4004 processor that we began with. With all respect to our friends in the auto industry, if their products had produced the same kind of innovation, cars today would go 470,000 miles per hour. They’d get 100,000 miles per gallon and they’d cost three cents.”

While Otellini did use technology jargon and statistics (“microprocessor is 5,000 times faster”), he then compared the technological innovation of the nanometer microprocessor to that of the automobile. In this case, even though you didn’t know much about microprocessors, you still managed to understand the main point of the statistic because it was put in context of something you do understand. Also, by comparing the development of the microprocessor to that of the auto industry, Otellini was able to come up with an exciting and shocking statistic (
“If their products had produced the same kind of innovation, cars today would go 470,000 miles per hour”).

MAKE IT VISUAL

Is it possible to make a statistic visual?

In 1958, President Eisenhower wanted to convey to the public the true magnitude of the billion-dollar deficit. Like the Wall Street journalist who cleverly made Bill Gates’ $40 billion more “real” by relating it to the audience, Eisenhower found a clever way to shock with a statistic by turning it into a visual. He said:

“To understand the billion-dollar deficit, imagine taking all the one-dollar bills in a billion and laying them out end to end. Why, it would more than go to the moon and back again!”

The visual of one-dollar bills going all the way to the moon and back again is startling. It’s much more exciting and memorable than a statistic about a billion-dollar deficit.

IN A NUTSHELL

Use statistics to grab attention. The following techniques will give more impact to your statistics:

• Relate your statistic to your audience
  
• Compare and contrast
  
• Make it visual
  

CHAPTER EIGHT

Offer the Audience Something New

The surest way to be boring is to be completely predictable. If your audience knows exactly what you’re going to say, then why should they pay attention?

Earlier in the book, you learned two ways to avoid being predictable. First, avoid a predictable “Thank you for having me here” opening. Second, use startling statistics to make sure you don’t lose your audience’s attention. There are several other ways to make sure your presentation isn’t completely predictable:

TALK ABOUT SOMETHING NEW

In his TED India talk,
Pranav Mistry
got a standing ovation for his talk on the thrilling potential of SixthSense technology. He gave his audience a glimpse into the future by demonstrating how his Sixth Sense device would allow people to browse the Internet on any surface, create a telephone keypad on their palm and draw on any surface. The device is the stuff of sci-fi movies and will revolutionize the way we interact with the digital world. Because it was such an exciting and new topic, Pranav had the audience hooked into his talk right from the start.

Do you have something new and exciting to talk about? If not, don’t worry! Lots of other speakers are in the same boat as you. The good news is that there are some other ways that you can avoid being completely predictable.

LOOK AT AN OLD TOPIC FROM A NEW PERSPECTIVE

If the topic you are going to be discussing has been overused, try putting a new spin on it or looking at it from a new perspective. For example, body language is a very common topic. Hundreds of thousands of talks are available on how to read other people’s body language. In her TED talk, researcher Amy Cuddy approached
body language from a new perspective
– she talked about how our body language affects how we feel:

“So when we think of nonverbals, we think of how we judge others, how they judge us and what the outcomes are. We tend to forget, though, the other audience that’s influenced by our nonverbals, and that’s ourselves”

ARGUE AGAINST CONVENTIONAL WISDOM

Thousands of talks are available on the Internet about the power of goal setting. It’s conventional wisdom that goal setting helps you achieve more success. However, what if that’s not true? What if, as Leo Babauta argues in
this article
, the best goal is no goal?

Arguing against conventional wisdom is a great way of keeping your audience hooked into your speech. Because you’re taking an unexpected stand, your audience members will be interested in what you have to say and curious to find out why you are saying it. Of course, you should only argue against conventional wisdom if you think it’s wrong.

Consider another example. It’s conventional wisdom that more choices result in more happiness. The more choices you have about what to eat, the more satisfied you will be when you make your decision. The more choices you have about how to invest your money, the happier you will be. Right?

In
this fascinating TED talk
, Barry Schwartz argues that having too many choices leads to the consumer feeling bewildered when making a choice and less satisfied even after choosing. His argument was backed up by research studies and examples. It was a very captivating TED talk because it changed the audience’s view on the topic and gave them a new way to look at an old topic.

Now, you may be thinking, “Akash, what if I don’t have anything new to talk about? What if I haven’t invented anything revolutionary? What if the issue I want to address is something that lots of other speakers have already talked about before? What if I can’t argue against conventional wisdom because the conventional wisdom is correct?” Again, don’t worry. There are two other ways that you can avoid your presentation being entirely predictable.

DIG OUT STORIES FROM ACADEMIC RESEARCH

There are a lot of great stories hidden in academic research. However, most of these stories are known only within the academic circle. If you’re willing to wade through the tomes of academic research, you can unearth great stories and statistics that you can use in your speeches and presentations to offer your audience something new.

Bestselling author Malcolm Gladwell is an expert at breathing life into academic research. My two favorite books by Gladwell, “
Blink”
and “
Tipping Point,”
bring to life stories from academic research.

In his
TED talk on “Choice, Happiness and Spaghetti Sauce,”
Gladwell brings to life the story of Dr. Howard Moskowitz. This story was quite well known in the field of psychophysics, but wasn’t well known to the general population. In his TED talk, Gladwell shares the story with his audience members. Here is a short excerpt from Gladwell’s speech:

“…I decided instead, I would talk about someone who I think has done as much to make Americans happy as perhaps anyone over the last 20 years. A man who is a great personal hero of mine. Someone by the name of Howard Moskowitz, who is most famous for reinventing spaghetti sauce.

Howard’s about this high, and he’s round, and he’s in his sixties, and he has big huge glasses and thinning grey hair, and he has a kind of wonderful exuberance and vitality, and he has a parrot, and he loves the opera, and he’s a great aficionado of medieval history. And by profession, he’s a psychophysicist. Now, I should tell you that I have no idea what psychophysics is, although at some point in my life, I dated a girl for two years who was getting her doctorate in psychophysics. Which should tell you something about that relationship. (Laughter)

As far as I know, psychophysics is about measuring things. And Howard is very interested in measuring things. He graduated with his doctorate from Harvard, and he set up a little consulting shop in White Plains, New York. One of his first clients was — this is many years ago, back in the early ‘70s — one of his first clients was Pepsi. And Pepsi came to Howard and they said, “You know, there’s this new thing called aspartame, and we would like to make Diet Pepsi. We’d like you to figure out how much aspartame we should put in each can of Diet Pepsi, in order to have the perfect drink.” Right? Now that sounds like an incredibly straightforward question to answer, and that’s what Howard thought. Because Pepsi told him, “Look, we’re working with a band between eight and 12 percent. Anything below eight percent sweetness is not sweet enough, anything above 12 percent sweetness is too sweet. We want to know, what’s the sweet spot between eight and 12?” Now, if I gave you this problem to do, you would all say, it’s very simple. What we do, is you make up a big experimental batch of Pepsi, at every degree of sweetness — eight percent, 8.1, 8.2, 8.3, all the way up to 12 — and we try this out with thousands of people, and we plot the results on a curve, and we take the most popular concentration. Right? Really simple.

Howard does the experiment, and he gets the data back, and he plots it on a curve, and all of a sudden he realizes it’s not a nice bell curve. In fact, the data doesn’t make any sense. It’s a mess. It’s all over the place…”

Click here
to watch Gladwell’s full TEDTalk.

INTERVIEW INTERESTING PEOPLE

You don’t necessarily have to look through academic research to find great stories, although it is a good place to look for interesting stories which are relatively unknown to the general population. You can also tell interesting third-person stories about your friends, family and people who you’ve interviewed. For example, in his TED talk,
Sir Ken Robinson
shares the story of Gillian, a choreographer he interviewed for his book:

…Anyway, Gillian and I had lunch one day and I said, “Gillian, how’d you get to be a dancer?” And she said it was interesting; when she was at school, she was really hopeless. And the school, in the ‘30s, wrote to her parents and said, “We think Gillian has a learning disorder.” She couldn’t concentrate; she was fidgeting. I think now they’d say she had ADHD. Wouldn’t you? But this was the 1930s, and ADHD hadn’t been invented at this point. It wasn’t an available condition. (Laughter) People weren’t aware they could have that.

Anyway, she went to see this specialist. So, this oak-paneled room, and she was there with her mother, and she was led and sat on this chair at the end, and she sat on her hands for 20 minutes while this man talked to her mother about all the problems Gillian was having at school. And at the end of it — because she was disturbing people; her homework was always late; and so on, little kid of eight — in the end, the doctor went and sat next to Gillian and said, “Gillian, I’ve listened to all these things that your mother’s told me, and I need to speak to her privately.” He said, “Wait here. We’ll be back; we won’t be very long,” and they went and left her. But as they went out the room, he turned on the radio that was sitting on his desk. And when they got out the room, he said to her mother, “Just stand and watch her.” And the minute they left the room, she said, she was on her feet, moving to the music.
And they watched for a few minutes and he turned to her mother and said, “Mrs. Lynne, Gillian isn’t sick; she’s a dancer. Take her to a dance school.”

I said, “What happened?” She said, “She did. I can’t tell you how wonderful it was. We walked in this room and it was full of people like me. People who couldn’t sit still. People who had to move to think.” Who had to move to think. They did ballet; they did tap; they did jazz; they did modern; they did contemporary. She was eventually auditioned for the Royal Ballet School; she became a soloist; she had a wonderful career at the Royal Ballet. She eventually graduated from the Royal Ballet School and founded her own company — the Gillian Lynne Dance Company — met Andrew Lloyd Weber. She’s been responsible for some of the most successful musical theater productions in history; she’s given pleasure to millions; and she’s a multi-millionaire. Somebody else might have put her on medication and told her to calm down.

USE PERSONAL STORIES

Finally, personal stories are one of the best ways to breathe life into an old topic. Sharing your personal stories adds a new perspective into an old, worn-out topic. For example, in her TED talk on domestic violence,
Leslie Morgan Steiner
makes a potentially dull topic interesting and emotional by sharing her personal story:

“I was 22. I had just graduated from Harvard College. I had moved to New York City for my first job as a writer and editor at Seventeen magazine. I had my first apartment, my first little green American Express card, and I had a very big secret. My secret was that I had this gun loaded with hollow-point bullets pointed at my head by the man who I thought was my soul-mate, many, many times. The man who I loved more than anybody on Earth held a gun to my head and threatened to kill me more times than I can even remember.”

IN A NUTSHELL

Avoid being predictable and boring by:

• Talking about something new
  
• Looking at an old topic from a new perspective
  
• Arguing against conventional wisdom
  
• Digging out stories from academic research
  
• Interviewing interesting people
  
• Using personal stories